A Scots Quair (91 page)

Only as he climbed the steps did he mind that he hadn't even a meek upon him, and turned to jump off as the tram with a showd swung grinding down to the Harbour: suddenly shining in a glint of sun, gulls above it, the guff of the Fish-Market meeting the tram like a smack in the face, it grunted and sneezed and galloped on through it. But the conductor had seen Alick and caught his arm:
Look out, you
whoreson, jumping off here. You'll bash out your brains—if
you've any to bash
.

Alick said he'd found he'd no money on him, he was one of the strikers at Gowans and Gloag's in the hell and all of a hurry to get down with a bit of news for the rest of the lads. He'd jump off here—

But the trammie held fast, a squat, buirdly bird with a face like a badly-made barn door. And he said Not so fast, wasn't he Union as well? Here, he'd pay the ticket. Sit down and wait.

That shortened the run, in a minute the Docks, the trammie slowed down at a bend where he shouldn't, the nearest to Gowans, and Alick jumped off and cried his thanks and took to his heels and ran like the wind.

When the four o'clock picket went on that day there hadn't been as big a birn as usual of idle folk to look on and claik. The cold was biting across Footforthie gnawing through the thin breeks and jackets of Broo men, sending them talking off to the Library to read last Sunday's
Sunday Post
, the racing news and the story of a lassie raped, bairned, killed, and fried up in chips—Ay, fairly educative, the Scottish newspapers…. But a dozen or so still hung about, not expecting much of a shindy at all: but you never knew when a strike was on, there might be a bit of snot flying ere long.

There was only one of the bobbies there, the young country cuddy, he grinned at the picket and one cried him the old tale of the bobby whose beat was fair littered with
whores: and a new sergeant came on the beat one night and set the bobby to jailing each whore: but at last the bobby put his splay feet down:
I've run in my sisters and my auntie to
please you, my wife and my daughter and my cousin Jean, but
I'm damned if I'll run in my mother as well—

And they all guffawed, they'd no spite against him, he none against them, funny a chap like that should have joined up with the lousy police though you couldn't much blame him, fine uniform to keep out the cold, good pay and a pension and perks for the picking. And you blew your chilled hands and spat in the Docks and were just thinking about dandering away home again when you looked up and saw a half-dozen police coming swaggering down to the Gowans gates, the meikle sergeant, Feet, in the lead. You cleared your throat and spat on the ground to get the stink of their wind from your thrapple, but the birn went by with hardly a look, they were all speaking low and chief-like together: what dirty sodding were they planning now?

The only chap of the picket who stood in the road was the young toff childe folk said was half-Red. He drew back a bit to let the bobbies gang by, but they weren't looking and one of the stots gave a stumble and nearly tripped over the toff. Then, afore you could wink, a queer thing was on, the bobby had grabbed the young toff by the neck and Feet cried out:
What's that—assaulting the police? Right, my lad, you can come
on up to the Station
.

Young Tavendale said not to talk rot, the constable had been stumbling all over the street. Some others of the picket came out from the lithe, hanging round the bobbies, and called the same, the cuddy of a bobby had had the staggers, or water on the brain—if he had a brain. But Feet cried
Stand
back, or well take you as well
; and he asked Tavendale if he'd come peaceable or not and Tavendale lifted his shoulders with a laugh and said he supposed so, he was cool and unfeared: and turned round sudden on the bobby that had bumped him:
I can see that this is a put-up show—

Afore he could say another word, Christ, what a crack! the bobby had his stick out and smashed him to the ground.
Then he looked to Feet and the meikle swine nodded:
In
self-defence, Dickson. All right, pick him up
.

You saw the toff as they carried him past, he was only a kid, his hair dripping with blood, he hung like a sack among their fat hands. The picket tailed after crying that they'd see about this: but at that the rest of the bobbies faced round and in half a minute had cleared the street, Feet said the picket was trying to prevent an arrest.

And off they carted young Tavendale; and just as you were slipping off home yourself to spread the news in Kirrieben you ran bang into a white-faced young fool, panting and habbering,
What's on at Gowans?
You told him, and he cried Oh Christ, he'd never meant it, and you thought he was probably drunk, or daft, or both, and left him to it, he looked soft enough to pitch himself head first in the Docks—

Every movement he made sent a stream of pain down his legs and body, he thought, but wasn't sure, that his right arm was broken where they'd twisted it; and thought again
Not likely,
that would show too much;
and fainted off in the fire of the pain.

When next he woke he thought it near morning, his throat burning, he tried to cry for a drink of water. And after a minute the cell door opened, a blaze from the passage on the blaze in the cell, he saw a dim face, big, it floated, and the face said he'd get a drink if he owned up now it was him that had drowned Johnny Edwards and organized the throwing of the pepper at the Docks? And Ewan moved his swollen lips, dull mumble, and heard himself say
You can go to hell!
Then his head went crack on the bobby's boot….

When he'd come-to after that time at the Docks he'd found himself on a bench in the Station, they'd started to ask his name and address and take it down in a big case-book. He'd asked what charge he was arrested on, and the big sergeant at the desk said he'd know soon enough, none of his la-de-da lip here, the bastard.
Right, boys, rape him
.

Two bobbies had taken on the job, in a minute they'd come on a bag of pepper, he'd stared, how the devil had that got
there? The sergeant had cried
What say you to that?
and Ewan, half-blind with a headache, had said
Rats. Some
groceries I was buying for my mother, that was all
, and the sergeant said by Christ, was that so? If his mother knew him when he finished with the Force she'd be a right discerning woman, she would:
Take him off to No. 3 cell, Sergeant Leslie.
See he doesn't try to assault you again
.

He'd thought that a lout joke, suddenly it wasn't, three of them came into the cell behind him. And he'd minded in a flash of a story he'd read of the ghastly happenings in American jails. Rot: this was Scotland, not America, the police were clowns and idiot enough, but they couldn't—

Two of them held him while Sim Leslie bashed him, then they knocked him from fist to fist across the cell, body-blows in the usual Duncairn way with Reds, one of them slipped in the blood and swore,
That's enough for the bastard, he'll bleed
like a pig
. Lying on the floor, Ewan had heard a queer bubbling, himself blowing breath through bloody lips.

Then, the cell wavering, they'd picked him up and flung him down on the wooden trestle.
Now, answer up or you'll get
the works
—And they'd asked him again and again to declare it was he had caused the drowning of Edwards; and he'd bitten his lips, saying nothing, till their fumblings at last brought a scream shrilling up in his throat, a bit of it ebbed out and the bobbies left off, standing and listening, feared it might have been heard even down this deserted corridor of cells. Then they said they'd leave him alone for a while, they'd be back in a wee to the mucking Red sod….

And still he'd said nothing, setting his teeth, though the pain behind his teeth had clamoured to him to let go, to confess to anything, anything, they wanted, Oh God for a rest from this. But that real self that transcended himself had sheathed its being in ice and watched with a kind of icy indifference as they did shameful things to his body, threatened even more shameful, twisted that body till his self cowered in behind the ice and fainted again…. And now, as he thought, the morning was near.

He moved a little the arm he'd thought broken, it wasn't,
only clotted with bruises, the dryness had left his throat, he lay still with a strange mist boiling, blinding his eyes, not Ewan Tavendale at all any more but lost and be-bloodied in a hundred broken and tortured bodies all over the world, in Scotland, in England, in the torture-dens of the Nazis in Germany, in the torment-pits of the Polish Ukraine, a livid, twisted thing in the prisons where they tortured the Nanking Communists, a Negro boy in an Alabama cell while they thrust the razors into his flesh, castrating with a lingering cruelty and care. He was one with them all, a long wail of sobbing mouths and wrung flesh, tortured and tormented by the world's Masters while those Masters lied about Progress through Peace, Democracy, Justice, the Heritage of Culture—even as they'd lied in the days of Spartacus, lying now through their hacks in pulpit and press, in the slobberings of middle-class pacifists, the tawdry promisings of Labourites, Douglasites…. And a kind of stinging bliss came upon him, knowledge that he was that army itself—that army of pain and blood and torment that was yet but the raggedest van of the hordes of the Last of the Classes, the Ancient Lowly, trampling the ways behind it unstayable: up and up, a dark sea of faces, banners red in the blood from the prisons, torn entrails of tortured workers their banners, the enslavement and oppression of six thousand years a cry and a singing that echoed to the stars. No retreat, no safety, no escape for them, no reward, thrust up by the black, blind tide to take the first brunt of impact, first glory, first death, first life as it never yet had been lived—

Trease said
Ay, well, we'll do what we can—and a wee thing
more. But I wouldn't advise you to come to the court
.

Chris asked why, and the big man with the twinkling eyes in the great pudding face got up from the sofa in the sitting-room and looked at her as though passing a mild comment on the weather:
I'm feared your Ewan'll have been
bashed a bit—all in bandages, you know, and a bit broken up
.

Chris stared:
But he didn't try to resist! All the rest of the
picket saw his arrest
.

Trease twinkled his little eyes a bit, a mild joke:
Oh ay, but
he's a Communist, you see, or he'll be by now, for his fancy
League was no more than the dream of an earnest lad. Anyway,
the bobbies think him a Red and they aye get Reds to ‘resist' at the
Station, they generally mash them in No. 3 cell. And this is your
Ewan's first go, you know, they try to kill off the Red spirit right
off
.

Chris said that was daft, they couldn't do things like that in this country, anybody knew the police were fair and anybody accused got a fair trial. Trease nodded, faith ay, if you were of the middle class and wore good clothes and weren't a Communist. Och, anything else—a sodomist, a pervert, a white slave trafficker, a raper of wee queans—any damn thing that you liked to think of. But if you were a revolutionary worker you got hell. Fair enough, for the Reds weren't out to cure the system, they were out to down it and cut its throat.

He waited while Chris got her coat and hat and left the house to look after itself. At Windmill Brae they found a tram and were down at the court by ten o'clock.

Outside were already a birn of men, down-at-heels, unshaven, they cried
Hello, Jim
, and stared at Chris and came drifting around Trease, unwashed, their stink awful, their faces worm-white, Chris stared at them with a sinking heart. Were these the awful folk that Ewan had ta'en up with?

Bobbies all about the entrance door, one or two had come down in the street, big-footed, and were pushing about, beefy and confident, truncheons out and shoulders squared. Trease stroked his chin and twinkled at the Broo men and strikers:
We'll demonstrate later, lads. You'd better disperse and
not raise a row
.

So the two got into the court at last, Chris had never been in one before, panelled in dark wood, with a witness box with a curling bit of wood above it that vexed her because the thing looked so daft. She whispered to Trease, asking what it was, and he twinkled back 'twas the sounding-board, and then leaned back in his bench and yawned, they'd not have her Ewan on for a while, they'd wait till the Bailie got hot up a bit.

They finished at last with the street queans ta'en up, a soldier who'd stolen cigarettes from a stall, a man who'd knocked over a boy with a lorry. But there wasn't much in any of the cases, Bailie Brown, the leader of Duncairn Labour, rapped out his sentences snell and smart, fair a favourite with all the bobbies and giving double the sentences a Tory would have given—to show that he was impartial, like. Then Chris saw an inspector go whisper to him and the Bailie look at his watch and nod; and the far door opened and some body in a bandage came in unsteadily between two bobbies, Chris knew one, Sergeant Sim Leslie of Segget.

And then she knew Εwan, and some body cried
Order!
and Trease gripped her knee so hard that it hurt, left her breathless and she couldn't cry again, couldn't do anything but stare and stare at the bandaged figure pass in front of her and stand in the dock, the bobbies all a-glower. A little neat man got up with a paper, and hitched his gown and gave a quick gabble, talking down his shirt-front low and confidential. Then he asked for a remand … death of John Edwards … brutal assault on police at Docks … incriminating evidence…. Violently resisting arrest—

The Bailie nodded and looked up at the clock,
Remanded
till Friday
, and then stood up, every body stood, and a bobby grabbed the bandaged figure.